When Madness Comes
by wurdsmythe
Summary: Drakken revels in his title of "mad doctor" — until it happens.


**WHEN MADNESS COMES**

_Hi, all! I know I'm supposed to finish HARSH, and I do have some chapters done. But this short story sort of demanded to be written. So here it is._

He'd always known it was a possibility. He knew himself well enough. He was a self-proclaimed mad scientist, right? He wanted to take over the world! That said it all, didn't it?

But when madness—true madness—finally came—it terrified him. It terrified him because he recognized it. He knew it the moment it reared its ugly head.

The beginning had been simple: he woke up one day and felt...well...bad. Unusually bad. He couldn't put his finger on it, not at that moment. But everything seemed...off. Uncomfortable. Itchy, like his own skin didn't fit him anymore.

When he looked in the mirror, his reflection seemed to him to be about three feet to the left of where it should be. He couldn't describe it any other way. He just felt as it _he_ wasn't quite where his _body_ was. His basic pieces didn't mesh anymore. He was out of sinc with himself.

He didn't feel the need to get dressed. Why? Who would care? He lived alone in a cavernous lair. Sure, Shego was there, but what did she care if he wore his complete lab outfit or shabby sweats and a t-shirt? And the henchmen? They might as well have been fleas on a dead dog—who cared what they thought. So why dress? Why bother? Who would notice? Sure, his mother had taught him all sorts of "proper" mannerisms, but in the end, what did they mean?

He struggled with himself to care. To get dressed. To wrap some kind of dignity around himself.

When he went downstairs to the kitchen and stood looking into the refrigerator for something to eat, he found that he didn't want to eat—even though he was hungry. His stomach rumbled loud and clear, yet he didn't want to feed it. Talk about weird. What was his problem? He tried to drink some juice, at least, but it tasted shallow. It made his stomach hurt. Fortunately, he was used to pain. He drank the juice down anyway, telling himself that he would eat something solid at lunch.

He went to his lab and sat at his table, pen and pad in hand, ready to think up another world domination scheme. This was his Monday morning ritual. His magnificent brain always came up with a plan!

But this time, he couldn't think of one. Worse, he felt as though he'd never think up another scheme in his life. He was suddenly sure, beyond all conceivable doubt, beyond all possible logic, that his genius was dead, that he would never think of another clever plan again, that his career as an agent of evil was over. His dreams were over. The purpose of his very life...was over.

It felt so sudden. So sure. So absolute.

It left him breathless.

Somehow he ended up at the kitchen table. He sat there, staring at a cup of coffee that he couldn't remember pouring, unable to drink it. He figured he would feel better if he would just sip a little. He was a coffee adict. If he didn't drink some soon, he was sure to get a caffeine headache.

But even though he knew that, he didn't drink. It wasn't that he _couldn't_. He simply _didn't_. And part of him even wanted to pour it into the sink, as if to say to himself in no uncertain terms, "You can't have it even though you want it, so there!" But he didn't have the energy to do even that. He just sat and stared at the cup and it contents, wondering where "Dr. Drakken" had gone. If he wasn't Dr. Drakken anymore, who was he? And did anyone care? What was his life for? What was his purpose? In the end, what would he gain for all his struggles? What final reward would his pain earn? Why was he trying so hard?

What _was_ the end, anyway?

It was death, silly.

That was all. No big. Cash in your chips and leave the casino, you're betting days are over. Your days are over, period.

He discovered, with no small amount of surprise, that he didn't care.

When Shego entered, she ignored him at first. As usual, she shuffled her way to the coffee pot, her hair mussed, her robe on crooked, still half-asleep because she'd been out late stealing something or another—Drakken couldn't remember what he might have sent her out to get—and so she was tired.

"Morning, Dr. D," she mumbled as she poured coffee into her favorite mug. She put a small plop of creamer into it and just a kiss of vanilla sugar. She took a sip. It energized her enough that she turned to face him. "Yo, Earth to Drakken. Good morning."

"No," he said dully, staring into his cup. "It isn't."

The dead tone of his voice told Shego that something was up. She automatically glanced at the wall calender, a sugary puppy-kitty thing that Drakken had picked up at a vet's office for free. He had a thing about sugary puppy-kitty calendars. She checked today's date, which had a small photo of a tiny fuzzy kitten sleeping inside a teacup. Nope, it wasn't his birthday. It wasn't their "I hired Shego" anniversary that he insisted on celebrating every year. It wasn't the birthday of any of the henchmen—as if she would bother acknowledging such a thing. And it wasn't her birthday. His mother's birthday? Nope. Cousin Eddie's birthday? Nope.

Kim Possible's birthday? Shego knew he knew that date well enough. She'd seen him do weird things on that date in the past. Once he burned a big black candle in his lab all day. The previous year he'd sat down with a sewing kit—she hadn't even known they _had_ a sewing kit—fashioned a Kimmie voodoo doll and spent an hour or so sticking pins into it and muttering to himself.

But there was no special notation on today's date box. Nothing was written there at all.

She looked back at Drakken. He was pale, his blue skin almost white, but he didn't seem feverish. In fact, Shego thought he looked extremely _solid_, as if the thoughts in his head—whatever those might be—held real gravity. He wasn't just in one of his "moods," then. This was something of substance.

She carried her cup to the kitchen table and sat down opposite her employer. "Dr. D?" she asked carefully.

Drakken heard her, but for some reason he couldn't respond. His body refused to move, and his lips refused to speak aloud the things he wanted to say. He wanted to tell Shego, "I need help." He wanted to say, "I love you." He wanted to ask her to shake him, to beat him up, to do _anything_ that might snap him back to normal. But he couldn't say those things. And so, for some reason, he came to the conclusion that he could _never_ say them, no matter what.

"Uh..." Shego paused. "Dr. D, are you okay?"

He stared into his coffee. "Shego..." His voice held a tone of vacant despair that made her uneasy. "When I first hired you...did I seem...sane...to you?"

She eyed him carefully, not quite sure of the situation yet. "Doc, believe me, you've never been sane."

Drakken sighed. Or did he? He _wanted_ to sigh. Sighing would be the appropriate response. Funny, though. He wasn't sure if he actually did it or not. He _thought_ he sighed. But he also knew he hadn't moved. Huh.

Shego was eying him. "Dr. D, what's this about? Did you have that dream about chopping up all your gradeschool bullies with a machete again?"

Now Drakken knew for sure that he hadn't sighed because his lungs suddenly yelled at him for oxygen. He inhaled rather half-heartedly. It took surprising effort. "I think..." he began.

Shego waited. "You think...?" she prompted. Then her natural sarcasm took over. "You think and I end up regretting it!"

Drakken winced. It wasn't a big wince, the kind he normally gave her when she stabbed right in the heart. It was just a little wince. But it displayed volumes.

Enough to make Shego concerned. "Okay, Doc, _what is going on?" _

Drakken just stared at his coffee cup. And then, for reasons even he couldn't explain, he pointed his index finger at it and gently but firmly pushed. The cup tipped over. Hot coffee splashed out. The tablecloth got soaked. Coffee spilled onto the floor.

Shego leaped to her feet. "What the hell did you do that for?" she demanded angrily.

Drakken's eyes lingered on the overturned coffee cup. It was empty. So empty. Like he was. Maybe that was it. He'd been full, and now he was empty.

Who had tipped him over?

"Okay," Shego said in a low tone. "I'll give you three seconds to say something, and that something had better be a good reason for this...this weirdness! One!"

Drakken heard what she said. It sort of made sense. He wasn't acting normally. Then again, he didn't feel normal so it would follow that his behavior wouldn't be normal, right? Shego didn't like change. Frankly, he didn't either. But this change was out of his control. It was just sort of happening. It did what it wanted to do, carrying him along without his consent, taking away from him everything that he ever cared about. Why was he letting it happen?

He wished he knew.

"Two!"

He continued to stare at the empty coffee cup laying on its side on the table and still dribbling out the last few drops of dark brown liquid. He heard Shego growl. An odd sound, that. Not quite like a dog, and nothing like a cat. A human growl. Maybe she would hit him. Maybe it would help. It was hard to say.

"Three!"

By the sound of her voice, Drakken figured that Shego expected him to suddenly bounce back to life, like this was all a gag or something. He desperately wished he could. But his eyes were glued to that damned empty coffee cup, and he could barely muster up the energy to breathe, and it all didn't much matter anyway so why even think about it?

Shego was glaring at him now. He wasn't looking at her so he couldn't actually see her expression, but he could feel it. Like heat. Her eyes could do that sometimes. She could glare at you and actually burn you, even if it didn't leave a mark.

He would have liked to get up and leave. He told his body to do so, but it ignored him. So he continued to stare at the overturned coffee cup until he heard Shego finally let out a low growl that quickly elevated into a quick animalistic yip of frustration. She stormed out of the kitchen, barking out a series of curses that would have made Drakken blush.

On a normal day.

#

That first day of Knowing went by like a bad dream. Not quite a nightmare. Not yet. Shego didn't hit him after all, even when she returned to the kitchen an hour later and found him sitting there exactly as she had left him.

She grew worried.

She tried to draw him out. He didn't respond, not that he didn't want to. He did want to. He just couldn't. He didn't say a word. He had nothing to say. He failed to respond to her subsequent yells, threats, and then genuine pleas. Then his body finally responded. He got up from the table without looking at her and trudged upstairs to his room. He laid on his bed all day, thinking random dark thoughts and seeing random mental images that were filled with smothering greys streaked and violent whites.

Day Two was much the same, except he never left his room. Shego pounded on his door, but he didn't open it. He didn't care. A very small, ever-shrinking part of him wished that she would burn the door down with her plasma and rescue him, but then he laughed. Rescue him? Like some helpless damsel in distress? He was no damsel, he was a mad scientist who had finally, literally gone mad. What was there to save? And Shego wasn't the saving type. No matter how much he wanted her to intervene, she wouldn't. He knew that. She respected privacy, and so privacy was what she gave him. The problem was, she didn't know it was the _wrong_ thing to give him.

Day Three. His thoughts were dim. He knew he was in his bedroom on his ridiculously big bed. He liked his ridiculously big bed. It made him feel important. It was soft and had plenty of room. He only wished that some of that room was filled with Shego. But that was not to be. Ever. He thought that was incredibly sad.

When she pounded on his door, he didn't answer, of course. He couldn't. He waited for her to finally break the door down. Finally. And she did. What she found wasn't what she expected, though.

He wanted to explain. How hollow he'd been feeling. How empty his heart had been. It had been empty for so long. Far too long. His dreams and mad schemes could take him only so far. Deep inside, he was just a man, a very lonely man who had tried to fill himself up with everything but what he truly needed.

Love.

Love had always eluded him. He had tried, though. God knows, had he tried through the years. But one man could take only so much rejection. So he gave up.

He regretted that Shego had to find him. If he'd had the strength, he would have arranged things differently. But that was Life. And this was Death.

She found him on his big comfy bed, sprawled out in old jeans and a t-shirt. His skin was that strange white pearlescent color of death, his wrists still bleeding from cuts that were so deep he'd almost sliced his hands off. His face was wet. He had cried.

Shego cried, too.

END

_Author's Note: This is what depression can do to ya. Don't go there. _


End file.
